Felipe Gardenas Amoro

Felipe Gardenas Amoro (17 September 1802-2 April 1877) was a general of the Mexican Army during the Mexican-American War.

Biography
Amoro was born to a criollo family in Zacatecas in the Viceroyalty of New Spain in present-day Mexico. He enlisted in the Spanish Army at the age of fourteen and was a Major by the rank of nineteen, but in 1823 he defected to join the mestizo uprising. He was wounded in combat and suffered a slight limp for the rest of his life, as he was shot in the leg during a raid on the Michoacan coal mines.

During the Texan War of Independence, Amoro fought in command of a brigade in the Siege of the Alamo, and narrowly escaped the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, pulled out of a muddy ditch by a loyal staff officer. In the early 1840s he fought against the Texas Rangers on the border, and when the Mexican-American War broke out in 1846, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General. Amoro commanded a division in the Battle of Loma Herboso, during which he was critically wounded. His division exploited a gap in the American line, but the two American flanks closed in and his unit was annihilated. Amoro's coat was filled with bullet holes, and he was captured by the Americans when his horse was riddled with musketballs. Amoro was released at war's end in February 1848, at which point his division had been completely destroyed in the Battle of Churubusco.

After the war he was offered command of the Mexican province of Sinaloa, and remained in that post from 1851 to 1862, when war broke out with France. Amoro was a strong supporter of the Conservatives, because he was a strong Roman Catholic and believed in the First Estate dominating religious matters. He defected to the Imperial Mexicans during the war and aided Maximiliano I of Mexico as an adviser, and after the imperials were overthrown in 1867, Amoro moved to Spain and died in Barcelona.